Gaming The New Year
Brought in the new year playing CyberPunk 2020 (with a few house rules). Pulled together an introductory adventure and wrote up 9 simple characters with a minimum of overlap between them for a game. Each character was a direct rip-off of a character in a piece of cyberfiction -
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2007 was the year of CyberPunk for me. After six years of not playing cyberpunk, at the encouragement of my players we launched a new CP2020 campaign in January. Around the same time I started shopping around for an alternate to the RTG Interlock system to run it. I've settled on a heavily-modified version of the ACTION! System and started working on a new "Futureshock" styled RPG.
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My RPG discovery of the year was Lacuna Part 1. This is a genius game that starts off like you are playing Agents in a Jungian version of the Matrix, and then goes on to explode your mind. Ran it once at my birthday / HoundCon, and am running it again for Sooch-a-palooza on Friday.
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The game I've wanted to play for years that I finally got a chance to this year was Vampire: the Requiem. I fell in love with this edition when Dextra bought it the year it came out at GenCon. I finally got to start running it this fall. I'm still not sure if I'm happy with the low damage from combat, but I love the other changes to the game and setting. This game supports the premises of Vampire better than the original Vampire ever did. Makes me very happy.
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Dungeons & Dragons consumed the majority of my RPG time until the summer of 2006. I started playing again lightly this year, but I'm happier to keep this game on the shelf again. It's something I love writing stuff for, but I'd rather be playing something else. Especially something more modern. D&D actually reminded me of my love for CyberPunk. My last campaign of D&D was essentially a CyberPunk campaign set in Eberron. For fantasy gaming, I had replaced it with Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay 2nd Edition and played a few games of it this year.
Speaking of Warhamster, this year I ran a Warhammer 40,000 RPG demo at GenCon. As a thank you, I received a copy of the 40KRPG rules in November. 20 years in the making, it's about time they turned Rogue Trader into an RPG. It's a very sexy book, and I love the setting, although I sort of worry that I won't actually play much / any of this game beyond the first adventure that we've started.
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Looking to 2008, I'm not actually watching any one RPG that closely, nor really looking forward to any game releases. I'm hoping that along the way, once again, a few releases will catch my eye and attention, and hopefully blow my mind. But if none do, I'll be glad to finally get New Tribes done enough to be playable.
- a classic meatboy enhanced with vat-grown muscles (background characters in a bunch of novels)
- a datacourier who's brain implants get compromised (Johnny Mnemonic)
- a razorgirl with amped reflexes and razor fingers (Molly Millions)
- a nihilist cyber terrorrist (Panther Modern from Neuromancer)
- a wirehead synner who is trying to recover his creation - a virtual entertainer who others see as a god / hero (Little Heroes)
- an escaped experimental cyborg killing machine (Destroying Angel)
- a street shaman (Shadowrun)
- an ex-military field reporter who doesn't trust his own memories, but records new ones for the man (Memory Wire)
- a low tech survivalist who lives under the city (the LoTek from Johnny)
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2007 was the year of CyberPunk for me. After six years of not playing cyberpunk, at the encouragement of my players we launched a new CP2020 campaign in January. Around the same time I started shopping around for an alternate to the RTG Interlock system to run it. I've settled on a heavily-modified version of the ACTION! System and started working on a new "Futureshock" styled RPG.
- - -
My RPG discovery of the year was Lacuna Part 1. This is a genius game that starts off like you are playing Agents in a Jungian version of the Matrix, and then goes on to explode your mind. Ran it once at my birthday / HoundCon, and am running it again for Sooch-a-palooza on Friday.
- - -
The game I've wanted to play for years that I finally got a chance to this year was Vampire: the Requiem. I fell in love with this edition when Dextra bought it the year it came out at GenCon. I finally got to start running it this fall. I'm still not sure if I'm happy with the low damage from combat, but I love the other changes to the game and setting. This game supports the premises of Vampire better than the original Vampire ever did. Makes me very happy.
- - -
Dungeons & Dragons consumed the majority of my RPG time until the summer of 2006. I started playing again lightly this year, but I'm happier to keep this game on the shelf again. It's something I love writing stuff for, but I'd rather be playing something else. Especially something more modern. D&D actually reminded me of my love for CyberPunk. My last campaign of D&D was essentially a CyberPunk campaign set in Eberron. For fantasy gaming, I had replaced it with Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay 2nd Edition and played a few games of it this year.
Speaking of Warhamster, this year I ran a Warhammer 40,000 RPG demo at GenCon. As a thank you, I received a copy of the 40KRPG rules in November. 20 years in the making, it's about time they turned Rogue Trader into an RPG. It's a very sexy book, and I love the setting, although I sort of worry that I won't actually play much / any of this game beyond the first adventure that we've started.
- - -
Looking to 2008, I'm not actually watching any one RPG that closely, nor really looking forward to any game releases. I'm hoping that along the way, once again, a few releases will catch my eye and attention, and hopefully blow my mind. But if none do, I'll be glad to finally get New Tribes done enough to be playable.